Through the Looking Glass
by iWatchtv
Summary: Claudia rips a hole in the very fabric of reality. Oops.
1. Chapter 1

**Note**: So this is my first Warehouse Fanfic, I usually do NCIS, but I started watching Warehouse this summer and I thought it was awesome. Plus Allison Scagliotti is pretty hot, that helped me get hooked. I happened to be in a very creative move and just spun out this little chapter, I hope to update soon, but I have a pretty bad track record of regular updating; be forewarned. And yes, I make up words. It's fun. So read and review, I'm counting on you guys.

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The aisles of the warehouse were cold and drafty, which was surprising, considering that there were no windows to let in any wind. There were only miles and miles of relics and inventions under one man made roof, sharing the one common trait of existing beyond the grasp of human understanding. Aisles of mystery that simply faded away into darkness.

It was the antithesis of what most people imagined when they heard of South Dakota. There were no languid fields of grain, no enormous herds of cattle or rural towns where everyone knew one another. Well, maybe there were, but certainly not here, in The Warehouse. Artie would know about them.

And here, in a place nearly devoid of human life, or anything really human for that matter, sat Claudia Donovan. On a beach chair. Watching Nickelodeon reruns on Merlin's Glass, a mirror with the ability to show the viewer anything they wanted, anywhere, or anywhen, in the world.

Myka rounded the corner, nearly bumping into the engrossed younger woman.

"Claudia! There you are! We've been looking for you. Artie said you'd been gone for over four hours. We thought you'd gotten lost."

Pete appeared quickly behind his partner.

"Yeah, or you'd gotten sucked into someth-" He broke off mid-sentence, "Hey is that Catdog?"

Claudia simply grinned smugly in response. Pete happily dragged over a nearby crate and joined her.

"Really Pete?"

"These are classic cartoons Myka. Come on."

Myka paused, furrowing her brow in thought.

"Is that...Merlin's Glass?"

"Yep!" Claudia chirped.

"The one designed by Merlin, the son of a mortal woman and a demon?"

"Allegedly."

"Right. And that doesn't bother you at all?"

"Not really, no." They both replied in unison.

Myka rolled her eyes.

"Children, I'm surrounded by children."

"I prefer senioritically challenged. And no that's not a word, geniuses are allowed to make up their own." Claudia quipped.

"Nice one." Pete laughed, raising his hand for a fist bump. She readily obliged him.

"I try."

"Oh there you three are. I had hoped at least one of you would have had the decency to..." He trailed off.

"Is that Merlin's Glass?"

"Uhm, yes?" Claudia answered nervously.

"The one created by Merlin 'Satanspawn'? A mirror able to rip holes in the very fabric of reality? And you thought it would be a good idea to watch cartoons on it?"

"Well, when you put it that way..."

"Turn if off, turn it off!" Artie yelled.

"Don't look at me, it's not like there was instruction manual lying around." Claudia shouted as she frantically fumbled around with the artifact. She couldn't find anything that even resembled a button, especially one labeled 'power'. Finally, Pete reached over and slammed it down on the shelf where it rested.

Claudia shot him a significant glance. He tapped his head.

"Averagicity. Gotta love it."

"Ooh. Nice one.

Myka looked towards Artie.

"So is it...safe now?" She asked.

"It should be." He replied. "The glass doesn't seem to work when unless it is exposed to light. Which was why it was covered..."

"Hey, it wasn't covered when I found it. It just...turned on I guess when I walked by."

"Nevertheless, I think the danger has passed. At least nothing has exploded anyway. Come on, there's some strange occurrences in Vancouver, I have a few ideas, but they'll need looking into." He turned; Peter and Myka following close behind.

"I feel like I'm going to need a massage." Myka groaned.

"I could probably help you with that. I used to date a masseuse, my training was very...extensive." Pete teased.

Claudia could almost hear his partner roll her eyes.

"Make me proud guys." She called after them. Her smile faded however, as she spotted a small pile of sand forming beneath the fallen mirror.

Well that can't be good, she thought.


	2. Chapter 2

**Note: **So I'm still kinda getting the hang of writing Warehouse 13 stuff, so I probably will make a few mistakes, and by few I mean many. And by many I mean only the ones that you notice. And if there's a little out of character stuff...my bad homies. Anyway, right. Chapter 2. Good stuff. Starting to get on a roll with the whole story thing, Claudia trying to fix stuff. you know, same old same old. Just read and tell me what you think, any advice would be awesome. Or you can just stop by and say hi. that works too.

Claudia sat, legs crossed, facing the nearly knee high pile of dark sand that had accumulated underneath the now covered artifact. Her first thought after noticing the anomaly within the home of the world's anomalies had been that perhaps simply facing Merlin's Glass towards the ground hadn't been as effective as it had seemed. Honestly, how could she have thought it would?

The quick acquisition of a nearby tapestry (A great stained and tattered thing that depicted Alexander of Macedon, or something) provided a makeshift cover, and the trickle had slowed.

For a while.

But by now, what looked like a small black ragged tear, suspended in midair as if reality was simply a rather realistic looking painting, was leaking (that was the most accurate description she could think of anyway) more and more of its strange sand.

For a while she had hope that she had inadvertently opened a doorway to a beach, South Dakota was a long way from the coast and who knows? Maybe this dimension was like one giant beach resort.

However, eventually it felt less like a vacation spot and more like an Indian Jones movie.

That scary thought had eventually resulted in the items scattered at her feet. Everything from superglue to a needle and thread lay where they had been thrown down in frustration while in her hands she toyed with an industrial size roll of duct tape. Despite what she had heard, the grey adhesive couldn't hold reality together, just everything but. On the other hand, this was The Warehouse. She had expected that, somewhere, there was extra strength trans-dimensional duct tape that could could solve her problem, but so far, she hadn't found it. And if there was one thing Claudia was good at doing, it was finding things. Artie could vouch for that.

She groaned in frustration and threw the roll of duct tape away from her. Of course, it hit the floating tear in time and space and continued through it, leaving an even larger gap in its place.

Even more of the sand (Although now she wasn't sure it was sand at all) came pouring in, as if hungry to devour this new world it had stumbled upon.

Either that or the Red Bulls she had chugged down for breakfast were finally kicking in. Caffeine had a way of making everything seem oh so dramatic.

Regardless, that fact that the trickle had become a stream and showed no sign of stopping or even slowing down meant that she had to find a way to close this...(portal? no...Gateway? Yeah, gateway seemed to fit.) some way to close this gateway. Or of course she could ignore it and hope that Artie wouldn't notice the brand new desert forming in the middle of his Warehouse. Or if he did, he would think it was completely unrelated to her.

That plan would work perfectly. If Artie was blind. And in a coma. Or dead.

She sighed turning towards where the others had gone. She could ask for help, surely the four of them could think of something. But Artie was still furious (to put it mildly)about the whole 'Forgetting to water the Midas Garden' thing. Maybe if she-

Unfortunately that train of thought was rudely derailed by a roll of duct tape hurtling into the back of her head.

The impact unsteadied her but she managed to whirl back to her little...problem. The gateway simply sat innocently. Well, innocent for something that seemed to be invading this world.

Without looking away, she picked up the rudely returned object. A quick glance showed it to be normal enough.

Claudia tilted her head. The hovering opening didn't change.

Only...now she had the feeling that some one was watching her. Some one...or something.

That or the caffeine was getting to her again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Note****:** This chapter was a little late I guess, my bad. Still trying to get a feel for writing WH13 stuff. Maybe it's just because there's only 1 season of background and character development. That and this fic is focusing on a relatively minor (and maybe under appreciated?) characters. If I do another one, I'm definitely gonna delve into the chaos that is Pete and Myka. You _know_ they have issues, with each other and separately. Like tons and tons. Very complicated people, those two. Right, so only a few more chapters in this fic. Mainly, I have to figure out how it ends. If you know, tell me. Seriously. read and review.

Claudia leaned against the shelf behind her, fingers nervously fiddling with her hair. It's not that she couldn't handle her growing problem (Extremely quickly growing, duct tape hurling problem) it was simply that she didn't want to bother Artie with something so trivial.

And she certainly wasn't trying to downplay the seriousness of the situation. So what if the foreign matter had formed a rather large pile? It looked to be only waist deep, had she been so inclined to wade through it. (She wasn't. Rolling around in extra-dimensional sand probably wouldn't end well.) No Problem. Easy to fix.

Most important of all however, was that she wasn't trying to delay the inevitable. Claudia Donovan certainly wasn't a procrastinator. It just seemed that way to the untrained eye.

On the other hand, maybe she did need a little break. She had been at this for what? Two, three hours?

It would be so easy to just walk away, make it someone else's problem.

Of course, that 'someone else' would be Artie, Myka or Pete, and she couldn't risk three of her friends, her only friends really, being injured because she was too lazy to deal with her own problem. It wasn't like she was too scared. Right?

She sighed.

It was easy before this, when the only thing that had mattered was finding her brother. Back then friends had always seemed frivolous, having one would be more of a hindrance really. Besides, aside from her brother, she had always looked out for numero uno. It was easier, and practical.

She hadn't been happy exactly, but life had been much much simpler. And lonelier.

She shook herself out of her reverie. That train of thought wasn't going to go anywhere good anytime soon and she had work to do.. Time to roll up the proverbial sleeves, Or whatever.

She appraised the situation. The opening itself was a bigger problem than what was building up underneath it, and so she should concentrate primarily on that, then deal with the sand later, preferably with a broom and dustpan. A very large dustpan and very sturdy gloves.

All of her low profile solutions had met with, to be generous, complete failure. That left, of course, the goo.

She had been hesitant to use it for several reasons, Artie's computer recorded each molecule of the stuff used and this insured that he would find out about her little adventure. Not that there was really any hope in trying to hide it anymore. Probably most important however, was that it was very very sticky. And it stunk. Badly. Some kind of cross between sulfur and sour milk. She actually liked this jacket and it probably wasn't going to survive this encounter, but sometimes a girl just had to prioritize.

She eventually made it to the nearest gooery station and trudged back, hose in hand. She pulled down her goggles over her eyes, and stood firm against the alien aperture. Then, with a quick twist of the nozzle, the area before her was bombarded by the purple substance. On either side, drenched artifacts crackled and sizzled, whatever strange force powering them neutralized.

"Say hello to my little friend!" Claudia howled over the sound of rushing goo. Trash talking never hurt, and why not go with the classics? Besides, after a few hours of losing, kicking ass felt good.

Eventually, when the immediate area was unrecognizable, she shut off the hose. If she was going to be forced to use the goo, she wasn't going to be stingy. She allowed herself a small self satisfied smile. Now all that remained was trying to explain to Artie why she had sprayed a few gallons of this stuff in the middle of the warehouse.

She'd wanted a big purple slip and slide? Maybe that would work. In fact, it kinda sounded like fun. Her clothes were ruined anyway, and she had seen a boogie board near Artie's desk...

Of course, at that moment, the portal popped back into existence.

She rolled her eyes. As if her life could ever be that easy.


	4. Chapter 4

**Note: **I haven't updated recently because I am a Master Procrastinator. In case you were wondering it's a title, so i capitalized it. Well over a decade of public schooling at work right there. Regardless, this chapter is relatively short and as such my author's note will be the same. I was surprised though that this fic was still on hte first page of the W13 fic archive. I'm used to NCIS where my stuff is buried 5 seconds after i press the submit button. 7 years of W13 and it will probably be the same thing. Fingers crossed. Read and review.

Claudia gently tread through the quickly evaporating goo, pacing a cautious circle around the apparently empty air.

Her smile grew to a full on grin. She, Claudia Donovan, had taken on the unknown and won. Booyah!

She twirled ecstatically, unable to help herself. The various goo covered items surrounding her rushed by nauseatingly; an old cracked leather hand bag, a ratty looking stuffed penguin, an angry looking Artie, a sparkling bowling pin- wait.

She froze and slowly turned towards her slime covered mentor.

"Well um...this is awkward. But believe me I have a very good explanation. Like a 'blow-you-away-with-its-plausibility' explanation."

Artie crossed his arms and tapped his foot expectantly.

Or murderously.

You never could quite tell with Artie. Well you could, but she found it comforting to pretend otherwise.

"...and I had planned on having more time to think of that awesome explanation. Please don't be mad, it's not what it looks like."

"It looks like you activated a dangerous artifact and was trying to remedy it without telling me."

The novice warehouse agent paused.

"Uh...purple slip and slide?" She blurted out belatedly. She beamed at him, a smile couldn't hurt. Underneath his gruff exterior Artie's heart melted for a sincere smile. That was her theory at least. In hindsight, it would have been better to test it out before now.

Claudia watched as Artie closed his eyes and began taking deep breaths. She could almost hear him counting backwards from ten. She really should have gotten him one of those stress balls for his birthday. Maybe two.

Three rounds of deep breathing and counting later, he finally opened his eyes. Claudia hastily put down the stuffed penguin she had been fiddling with and worked very hard at pretending she hadn't done anything wrong.

"Can you tell me what exactly happened?" His voice sounded strained.

"Well I was just doing inventory, carefully, obviously and minding my own business, again obviously, when uh...this tear just appeared floating in midair leaking sand and then i soaked it in slime." She rushed through the last few words.

Artie arched an eyebrow.

"Were you playing with Merlin's MIrror again?"

"First of all, I'm not a child, I don't play. I utilize. And no, I didn't _utilize_ that mirror thing after you freaked about it."

"Did you _utilize_ your brain before you started playing with dangerous and unfamiliar artifacts?"

"Now that's just cruel."

Artie sighed and looked at the destruction cause by his apprentice.

"You're going to have to redo this entire aisle, we have to be sure everything is accounted for and nothing ran off. Literally."

"Artie I've been down here for eight hours doing inventory, I swear I've forgotten what the sun looks like." Claudia whined.

"At least you're just cleaning up a mess and not a tear in space time."

They both turned as something fizzled behind him.

Claudia shook her head sadly.

"You just had to say it didn't you."


	5. Chapter 5

**Note**: Here we are at the last chapter, its been fun, for me anyway. Sorry about the gap between updates but...I don't really have a valid excuse. I'm just a little bit too lazy for my own good. Now that this is done, I'm think about writing a couple more Warehouse stories, maybe one shots, maybe multi fics. Not really sure yet. If you have suggestions by all means tell me. I like reviews and messages if only for the fact it lets me know if people are even reading my work. Speaking of, I have tumblr with a couple short stories up. If you get bored and want to read them, check out my profile and click on my homepage. Back to Warehouse, 2nd season starts July 6 (as if you didn't know). Also if anyone knows if they have a comicon panel, I DEFINITELY want to know so I can go see it. Comicon. i'm excited. So, assuming you didn't skip this already and went straight to the actual chapter (Which is totally fine by the way, I really would rather have you read my story than my ramblings) Here is the final chapter. I made it a little longer, especially for you. You're welcome. Also, it's REALLY hard to find words for inter dimensional portal without sounding really repetitive.

Both Artie and Claudia started at the opening in disbelief. The goo had rendered unimaginable powers inert with ease, but this small opening had survived it. In fact it seemed to be growing even faster.

"Well I'm out of ideas." Claudia sighed.

"Good thing I'm in charge then hmm?" Artie retorted. "Watch it, make sure nothing comes through. I'll be right back." He quickly ran in the direction of his office.

"Make sure what doesn't come through? Artie? What is going to come out of this thing!" Claudia called after him futilely.

"Great. This is definitely going to end well. What's the one rule of sci-fi horror movies? Never get left alone with the inter-dimensional portal. Stupid stupid stupid."

She froze as she noticed something moving out of the corner of her eye. That would have been frightening enough by itself considering that the warehouse currently housed only two people, and the other one had just run off in the opposite direction.

No, what made this movement more frightening was that it came from the other side of the midair opening.

Despite every instinct screaming to put as much space between her and whatever was on the other side as fast as possible, she inched closer.

Artie had told her to keep anything from coming out, and that's what she was going to do. A creature from another dimension, or whatever the magic hole led, was probably not going to be very friendly, and if it escaped into the warehouse, it would be almost impossible to catch. It would be like Where's Waldo in a room the size of a small country and if you didn't find the striped bastard fast enough he ate you. Or something.

She was within arms reach of the portal when a shadow darted across it. Stifling a yelp she grabbed the nearest artifact, however it was doubtful that damned penguin was going to be of any use.

She silently cursed herself for not being able to fix this earlier, before it became so B horror movie-esque. If only yahoo answers had been more helpful, she wouldn't be in this mess.

As if the universe was eavesdropping on her inner monologue, a scaled claw lashed out through the opening.

Claudia jumped back, part of partly terrified, but also partly unimpressed. Really? A scaly claw, that's the best you could do? At least try to be original silly alternate dimension.

The arm was withdrawn and replaced by a reptilian pupil framed by sickly orange iris. Also it was hissing, as if the fact it was malicious hadn't become apparent yet.

Claudia shuddered. It was scary, but not as bad as the other images that had been floating around her head.

The creature backed away and tried again to swipe at the girl genius with its (thankfully) inadequately sized arms.

Almost on reflex, she hurled the penguin her conscious mind had forgotten. It hit the creature with a sharp thunk, the scales it touched blackening with frostbite. The thing recoiled with another, rather annoying, hiss.

"Claudia, duck!" Artie yelled as he rounded the corner. He tossed the round object clutched in his right hand through the portal and held on to the length of cloth wrapped around the other.

"Artie what was that?" Claudia stared blankly at him, "It looked like a grenade."

Artie reached her and threw himself to the ground, making sure to bring his assistant with him.

A muffled explosion reverberated through the aisles of the warehouse leaving a calm silence in its wake.

Artie sat up panting.

"It was a grenade." He smiled lightly and began fiddling with the other item he had brought.

The peaceful stillness was broken by the sounds of several more hissing creatures. They seemed to be getting closer.

"Now this," Artie explained, "Is the a shawl of Morgan Le Fay, Merlin's archenemy, or lover depending who you ask. Probably both." He chuckled a little at his own joke.

Claudia stared at him in shock.

"You like this don't you."

"What cleaning up the life threatening messes of my protege?"

"Yes."

Artie smiled again.

"Maybe a little. It reminds me of when I was young." With that he tossed the shawl to cover the opening before them.

As the two touched, a roar of electricity began filling the air.

"What's happening?" Claudia called over the uproar.

"Well, Le Fay and Merlin are opposites, their energies are negative and positive, the remnants of her power on the shawl should cancel out the powers of Merlin that are keeping the doorway open."

Without any warning, the sparks stopped flying, the portal disappeared and the Le Fay's accessory floated to the ground seemingly unharmed, if slightly singed.

"Well that was rather anticlimactic." Claudia sighed.

"Would you rather have had another explosion?" Artie asked as he bent down to gather up some of the artifacts that had fallen off their shelves. "Okay now break's over. Get back to work."

"Break?" Claudia stared at him in disbelief, "Artie that was a terrifying and potential fatal experience and you're acting like I was on a coffee break? Now we just go back to business as usual? I should at least get the day off. Or maybe hazard pay."

"If you took the day off every time you almost died you'd never get any work done." Artie turned and headed back to his office, magical portal closing scarf in hand.

Claudia rolled her eyes at the retreating figure.

She could have gotten a normal summer job, but nooooooooo. She had to do something interesting.

**End note:** Search yahoo answers for how to close an inter dimensional portal. I double dog dare you.


End file.
